1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printer using thermal recording technology, for example, and, particularly, relates to a printer which can print on both a recording sheet for a label on a base sheet (hereinafter called label paper) and normal recording paper (hereinafter called plain paper) as a recording medium.
2. Related Art
Heretofore, work for sticking on commodities a label on which a bar code showing the price of a product, a destination of delivery and so on are printed, is performed in a store, a physical distribution center and others. Recently, a portable small-sized printer for issuing such a label has been proposed.
FIG. 7 is a schematic drawing showing the internal constitution of a conventional type printer for issuing a label.
As shown in FIG. 7, roll label paper 103 in which plural labels 102 are stuck on a base sheet 101 is loaded into a printer 100. A thermal head 106 is attached to a printer cover 105 which can be opened or closed against a printer body 104. The printer 100 is constituted so that the thermal head 106 presses the label paper 103 against a platen roller 107 when the printer cover 105 is closed, and predetermined printing is performed on the label 102.
A contact member 108 is provided over the platen roller 107 and the base sheet 101 of the label paper 103 is bent when pressed against the platen roller 107 by a pressing roller 109 provided on the end on the printer cover 105. Owing to such constitution, when the label paper 103 is fed after printing, the base sheet 101 and the label 102 are separated because of the rigidity of the label 102 and the label 102 is ejected from an ejection port 110 provided in the printer cover 105. In the meantime, the base sheet 101 of the label paper 103 is ejected from another ejection port formed at the front of the printer body 104.
The printer 100 can also print on rolled plain paper not shown instead of the above label paper 103, and in that case, printed plain paper is ejected from the ejection port 110 of the printer cover 105.
However, the conventional type printer 100 constituted as described above has the following problems.
That is, a printer provided with a mechanism for separating the above label has a problem that when plain paper is set, the leading end of the plain paper is required to be passed through the ejection port 110 of the printer cover 105 and the work is very troublesome and causes waste of time in setting in plain paper roll.